Tag: In Memoriam

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Remembering Tameka ‘Big Baby’ Goodman, a Complete Entertainer

Tameka "Big Baby" Goodman (Photo courtesy of SouLink Music)

Though she grew up in Shreveport, Lousiana, and will be laid to rest there in a ceremony on Saturday, July 9th, Tameka “Big Baby” Goodman was a Memphis performer through and through. Having had health issues for some years, the singer’s death on July 4th was not completely unexpected, but nevertheless sent many Memphis musicians and fans into shock. Goodman was 47, and died from complications related to a heart attack she had in 2016.

Guitarist Joe Restivo worked with her well before then, and thus experienced Goodman in her prime. And his awe is palpable when he recalls her performances. “I worked for her for three years, around 2010-13, at Memphis Sounds, which was this underground soul club. I was playing with the band A440, run by John Williams. As a guitar player, for me to work with a singer of that caliber was an honor. She had an incredible instrument.

“She could generate a lot of power as a singer, but was also very subtle. She could sing in a whisper. Amazing pitch, tone, all that, but the thing about it was that she was amazing at crowd work. She could improvise; she’d pick someone out of the crowd and kind of play with them. She was way more than just a singer. She was a true entertainer, and I think that’s kind of rare these days.”

He pauses, then adds, “And she was one of the nicest, kindest, sweetest women that I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with.”

Tameka “Big Baby” Goodman (Photo courtesy of SouLink Music)

That’s echoed by all who met her. Singer (and Memphis Slim House executive director) Tonya Dyson befriended Goodman soon after she relocated to Memphis. “I met Big Baby in 2005 or ’06, when she moved here after Katrina,” Dyson recalls. “And she was just a sweetie pie. She had this big Afro, and dressed really Afrocentric, like me. And she could just sing. She really knew her music, and the history around it. So we could talk all day. And she was so straight with everyone, across the board. She was super supportive and she kept up with people. She would call you and leave you a voicemail for your birthday. That was the type of person she was. Just super funny, jovial and happy.

“Even when she got sick and had that massive heart attack, she was still making jokes, and in great spirits. You wouldn’t have known that she had technically died twice on the table. There was a gig she played right after the heart attack, where she gave a powerful testimony. They were telling her family she might not live, and then they said, ‘If you do live, you’ll need hospice care.’ And yet there she was, standing there with a cane, singing!”

Recalling the time of Goodman’s first heart attack, Dyson marvels at her resilience. “They intubated her and it was sitting on her vocal cords. They thought she may not be able to even talk anymore. And within a year, she was up and singing again. That was just the person that she was. She wasn’t gonna take no for an answer, not even from life.”

Goodman’s manager, Jawaskia “JL” Lake, recalls how her life changed for the better in Memphis. “She was born and raised in the church,” he notes, “and she did some things in Shreveport, but she came to Memphis after Hurricane Katrina, and man, when she got there, she blew up. Eventually she even toured the country. She played the Apollo and a whole lot of other places.”

Just as Restivo noted Goodman’s quick wit with a crowd, Lake emphasizes her creativity. “It was hard to have a practice because she was just so creative. She made up stuff right there on stage. She was really one of a kind. You never knew what she was going to do, and she really knew how to grab the crowd. She was a fun, comical person, so she knew how to grab that crowd and interact with people. And just have a good time. She made that a part of her show.”

He also stresses the importance of her longstanding residency at Memphis Sounds. “She created her platform at Memphis Sounds, but after that she played all over the city, including a lot of weddings, a lot of corporate gigs. And she created big fan bases in Jackson and Bolivar, Tennessee. In Bolivar, her show got rained out once, but the people were so determined to see her that we had to find another location, on the spot.”

Lake notes that, though she returned to performing after her heart attack, that rally was short-lived. “It’s actually been about three years since she performed. She had already stopped before Covid. She was in and out of the hospital, and we just lost her.”

Many in the city are grieving, and many are making the trip to Shreveport for tomorrow’s memorial service. Lake notes that plans are being made for a separate memorial service in Memphis, sometime in the near future.

Reflecting on her artistry, Lake concludes, “She was an amazing talent. And you need to pull her up on YouTube to really see how amazing she was.”

“The last song she worked on was with me,” Lake notes, “because I’m an artist as well. We did a song together, and it’s the very last song she ever recorded. We were like brother and sister. She’s the type of person, where once she got to know you and open up to you, it’s like family.”

A memorial service for Tameka “Big Baby” Goodman will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday, July 9 at the Light Hill Baptist Church in Shreveport, Louisiana.

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Remembering Nan Hackman, Champion of Indie Music and Film

Nan Nunes Hackman (Credit: Nan Hackman)

Just before Thanksgiving, the local arts scene was dealt a blow when Nan Nunes Hackman –– who documented Memphis music and contributed much to local film making –– passed away from Covid-19 on Sunday, November 21, after her immune system was compromised by lymphoma cancer and its treatments. She was 67.

Earlier this year, Memphis magazine’s profile of her life and work was a welcome corrective to her largely unsung efforts in the Memphis arts scene. Now, many are reflecting on just how much she brought to the city and its artists.

“It sucks to lose somebody so suddenly, without being able to say goodbye,” says guitarist and songwriter Robert Allen Parker, who collaborated with Hackman on the 2013 documentary Meanwhile in Memphis: The Sound of a Revolution. “I always talked to Nan weekly. All through the pandemic we’d do a video call, up until last week, even when she went in the ICU hospital bed. And she was still very much in high spirits. This whole time, the fact that she was at Vanderbilt getting the treatment was looking positive.”

Staying positive was a particular strength of Hackman’s. As a teacher in Shelby County Schools’ Creative Learning in a Unique Environment [CLUE] program for 20 years, Hackman developed an interest in video and film, and touched many lives as she did. “There’s one young man who I taught around the year 1980, and he was making an animated Super 8 movie with cardboard cutouts and stop motion animation,” she recalled when we spoke earlier this year. “And he was really into it. You would run into these kids who got excited about it and they wanted to go ahead and do additional projects. So this kid was motivated. He took the preliminary instruction and ran with it. And that’s what you want. Also, these movies were all silent, back then. So we would put appropriate music on a cassette and play it with the film, and hope that they were sort of in sync. And that’s what he did. His movie was The Attack of the Killer Ants. He’s well into his 50s now. He went to L.A. and decided to hang around the TV world there. The last I heard, he was working on How I Met Your Mother. So he parlayed this interest that started when he was a 7th grader into a career. That’s very rewarding!”

Her positive outlook led her to push herself to do more and more video and film work on her own, though she remained steadfastly homespun about it. “I’m not a professional. I don’t want to be. I want to do the projects that I want to do,” she told me. And yet she had a knack for creating quality work, as the response to Meanwhile in Memphis attested to. Grammy-winning writer Bob Mehr called it “a sprawling, important document of the city’s modern musical underground,” and it won the Audience Award at the 2013 Indie Memphis Film Festival.

If that film revealed her skills as a producer and an editor, her years of documenting Rhodes College theater productions and performances by the New Ballet Ensemble had honed her instincts for capturing magic in the moment. And, well before camera phones were ubiquitous, she paid her dues to be able to do so. “I filmed the very first footage of Charles ‘Lil Buck’ Riley, the jooking dancer, in 2007, doing ‘The Dying Swan,’” she explained. “It was an improvisation, and the reason it exists is because I lugged a heavy camera to a school show in West Memphis in October of 2007 and filmed him, and then put it up on YouTube. Eventually it went viral, but it literally happened because I lugged a camera. That experience showed me the importance of capturing one incredible performance. It was the first time he had performed it. And it was an improvisation. As he was doing it, I was aware of the importance of capturing it. I will say, it was very satisfying to see that it yielded such great fruit.”

She continued to take on independent projects, including producing and shooting a series of music videos for Parker’s album, The River’s Invitation.

Through it all, Hackman always pointed out how important her husband, Dr. Béla Hackman, was to her work in the arts. “I couldn’t do any of this without Béla,” she explained. “He supports me financially, gives me moral support, and he keeps my computer running. And Béla is also the graphic designer for Rob’s albums. He’s self-taught and very good at it. He has some wicked Photoshop skills and has studied design principles. And he’s meticulous. So all the graphics are extremely clean and professional looking. Whereas, I have some rudimentary skills, and I am quick and dirty. You do not want me doing the final version of your graphics. I will slap something together quickly. But that makes for a good partnership, because I can get stuff done on a deadline, and he can do it correctly. We work well together.”

An obituary in The Commercial Appeal quotes Dr. Hackman as saying that a memorial service for Nan Hackman will likely be held next spring. It also quotes his summation of what motivated her to do the work she excelled at: “All this stuff was going on that was not being documented and preserved. The idea is, she’s trying to perpetuate this stuff for future generations, for posterity. That’s really what drove her.”

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Music Music Blog

Friends to Gather in Memory of Trumpet Player Nokie Taylor this Saturday

CREDIT: Shawn M. Carter

Beloved trumpet player William “Nokie” Taylor, who passed away in December, will be honored in a special event at Harbor Town tomorrow. Bennie Nelson West has posted that the event will serve to “remember & celebrate his life and the joy he brought to so many with his musical gifts, humor and good nature.”
Shawn M. Carter

Nokie Taylor receiving a Beale Street Note in 2012

In keeping with Taylor’s freewheeling spirit, the event will not be overly formal. “I’m planning it by the heart,” West tells the Memphis Flyer. “There’ll be some singing, some playing and some stories told. Nobody’s gonna preach. A lot of people will be performing, such as musicians who have played with him. Any FreeWorld musicians who want to come can play. It’ll be an open jam session.”

Though outdoors, the numbers will be limited out of safety concerns. “I attended an event down there for another deceased friend about a year ago,” says West, “and it was very pleasant. One of Nokie’s cousins will say something, and other people can tell their Nokie stories. Bring your love, bring your joy. Let’s celebrate and have fun.”

Read more about the life of Nokie Taylor, including thoughts from his son Ditto Taylor, here.

“Celebrating the Life of William ‘Nokie’ Taylor” will take place in the first parking lot/park across from Paulette’s Restaurant in Harbor Town, Saturday, March 6, 1-3 p.m.

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Music Music Blog

RIP Rance Allen & Stan Kesler: Deep Cuts from the Lives of Two Lost Legends

Rance Allen (left) & the Rance Allen Group

Last week was a dark one in the history of Memphis music, as two of its legends passed away. The deaths of Stan Kesler on October 26 and Rance Allen on October 31 were noted around the world, as each of them, in their own way, had made profound marks on the musical achievements of Memphis for many decades.

In honor of their memories, we present a few of the masterpieces of the recording arts that they made possible, too often neglected in the standard top 100 lists of hit records from this city.

Rance Allen, known as the “Father of Contemporary Gospel Music” and ultimately attaining the position of Bishop in the Church of God in Christ for the Michigan Northwestern Harvest Jurisdiction, grew up in Michigan and formed The Rance Allen Group with brothers Thomas and Steve in his early twenties. In 1972, Stax Records signed the group to newly formed subsidiary label The Gospel Truth, and the combination of their vocal and instrumental talents with Stax created an unforgettably funky version of gospel that is still hard to beat.

RIP Rance Allen & Stan Kesler: Deep Cuts from the Lives of Two Lost Legends (6)

Here they are performing that same year at the historical Wattstax festival in Los Angeles.

RIP Rance Allen & Stan Kesler: Deep Cuts from the Lives of Two Lost Legends (2)

They went from success to success over the coming decades, eventually scoring their first gospel #1 in 1991. In 2007, the Rance Allen Group brought the house down at Stax’s 50th Anniversary celebration at the Orpheum Theatre.

RIP Rance Allen & Stan Kesler: Deep Cuts from the Lives of Two Lost Legends (3)

Stan Kesler was born in Mississippi but moved to Memphis in 1950 and was soon playing with the Snearly Ranch Boys, who ultimately gravitated to Sam Phillips’ Memphis Recording Service and Sun Records. Here’s one unforgettable track they cut there in 1955, co-written by Kesler, released on Sun offshoot label Flip Records. He went on to write many songs, including “I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone” and “I Forgot to Remember to Forget,” both recorded by Elvis Presley.

RIP Rance Allen & Stan Kesler: Deep Cuts from the Lives of Two Lost Legends (9)

A multi-instrumentalist, he played bass on Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Great Balls of Fire,” among others. He also picked up his chops as a recording engineer at Sun, which he would make use of throughout his career. Growing into a producer in his own right, he developed an ear for artists and bands with character in their sound, helping to develop their distinct identities. Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs was the ultimate expression of his production style, and tunes like “Wooly Bully” and “Little Red Riding Hood” have entered the pantheon of pop achievements from that era.  Here are two other deep cuts, not heard often enough, from that same brilliant band.

RIP Rance Allen & Stan Kesler: Deep Cuts from the Lives of Two Lost Legends (4)

RIP Rance Allen & Stan Kesler: Deep Cuts from the Lives of Two Lost Legends (5)

Later, at Quintin Claunch’s Goldwax label, he worked primarily as an engineer, but it was Kesler who assembled the crack backing band for soul artist James Carr: guitarist Reggie Young, drummer Gene Chrisman, keyboardist Bobby Emmons, and bassist Tommy Cogbill. These players were later recruited by American Sound Studio and became known for all time as The Memphis Boys. Here they are on two of Carr’s masterpieces, while still working for Goldwax.

RIP Rance Allen & Stan Kesler: Deep Cuts from the Lives of Two Lost Legends (8)

RIP Rance Allen & Stan Kesler: Deep Cuts from the Lives of Two Lost Legends (7)

Through the 80s, he joined a group of former Sun session musicians who traveled the world as Sun Rhythm Section, then retired from music. Looking back on his career in a 2014 profile in The Bartlett Express, he deemed “If I’m A Fool (For Loving You),” recorded by Presley at American Sound Studio in 1969,  as his finest achievement as a songwriter.

RIP Rance Allen & Stan Kesler: Deep Cuts from the Lives of Two Lost Legends